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[film] Great review of Apocalypse Now Redux… ‘What passion this film has – what mad daring, what ambition. And what have we got now? CGI. Apocalypse Now is supposed to be a film you grow out of. I can only say it’s time to grow back into it again.’

‘Never get out of the boat. Absolutely goddamn right. Unless you were goin’ all the way. Kurtz got off the boat. He split from the whole fuckin’ program.’

[film] Typhoons, binges… then a heart attack — interview with Martin Sheen about Apocalypse Now … ‘The shoot is, of course, a cinematic legend. It was regarded as such a year before the movie was even released. Typhoons destroyed several huge sets. Sheen had a heart attack, aged only 36. Brando – obese, overpaid – was rumoured in the press to have been difficult and self- indulgent, though no one on set thought so.”Marlon wasn’t difficult at all,” Sheen says. “Never. The only problem we had was the image, his presence, but he’d just dismiss it. He treated everyone the same – Francis, me, the guys on the crew. Also, out of all of us, I think he’d spent the most time in the third world. So he was more aware of the fact that the world’s not made up of first-class service and over-privileged people. I was in awe, because for my generation of actors there were only two guys, Marlon and [James] Dean. And for Dean there was only one – Marlon.”‘

[movies] Interesting review of Apocalypse Now Redux … ‘Col. Kilgore (Robert Duvall), the surfing-obsessed, napalm-crazy Air Cav honcho, the additional minutes are more than a madness bonus. They excavate contradictions in his character that were glimpsed only briefly in the 79 cut, and make him seem both more monstrous and more humanmore monstrous because he is more human. His interest in acid-tripping California surf god Lance Johnson (Sam Bottoms) now seems less like a middle-aged mans power-juiced nostalgia trip than a prepubescents obsessive male crush. Kilgore dotes on this fair-haired visitor, monitoring his needs the way an old-school movie producer might pamper a star, and Lancelike Kilgore, a fancy cipher in 79responds with a stoners sense of privilege. (Refusing to surf in artillery-pounded waters, he says: "Im an artist.")’ [via Robot Wisdom]

[movies] The Observer on “special editions / director’s cuts” of films — includes mentions of The Exorcist and Apocalypse Now… ‘The Apocalypse Now Book, published by Faber this month, contains a detailed description of the five-hour film. The French plantation sequence is the most fully formed and vital omission. For those who have even a casual acquaintance with Apocalypse Now, it comes after the death of Larry Fishburne’s teenage conscript Clean, when the boat commandeered by Willard (Martin Sheen) pulls up to a fog-bound quay which leads to the genteel quarters of a group of colonial French. The US soldiers eat dinner with the French, and Willard shares an opium pipe and bed with a young woman.’